Exploding Kittens Don’t Need My Help

I like The Oatmeal comics by Matthew Inman, so when I saw a link to the Kickstarter campaign for Exploding Kittens I was interested.

Exploding Kittens is a new card game that Matthew and two other people (Elan and Shane) are creating. It features Matthew’s cartoons and looks like it will be fun-times.  Plus, it brings explosions and kittens — two things that the internet loves — together with some other interesting characters.

I bookmarked the Kickstarter page, with the intention of coming back later and maybe contributing. The next day I mentioned to a friend that I was going to buy the game and that we should play it. I mention these things because I don’t want you to think that what came next was an impulse decision. I had time to reflect.

You see, Elan, Matt, and Shane’s Kickstarter campaign reached its goal of $10,000 in 20 minutes. It was 1000% funded in less than an hour. Today, with 19 days left to go in the campaign, they’ve raised over $4,993,000. (It’s going up even as I write this.)

Knowing all this, I backed the campaign today. I contributed $40 and in return I’ll get a copy of Exploding Kittens when it comes out in the summer.

They don’t need my money. They’ve got thousands of times more funding than they need. And I could probably get the game cheaper if I waited for it to go on sale after it comes out. But I bought in anyway. I wanted in on the ground floor. I wanted to show my support and make that fundraising number go up a little bit more. I wanted to be part of the Exploding Kittens crew.

This is pretty powerful stuff. I’m not sure what it means psychologically, or how it affects marketing and the way companies get created, but it seems like people should be paying attention.